Spudlock Holmes and Walatson
by WalamaCada
Summary: A crossover story of the classic Sherlock Holmes combined with the Crew members Rage, Hollow, Fluke, Evans, and the many others that make up the Crewdom.
1. The Great Potato Chase

The morning air was chilly at three in the morning, and the street was nearly deserted. All of the cars were parked, not yet ready to transport the people of the neighborhood to work. The grass was frosted over into a wintery-green.

Only two people could be seen at this hour as they hurried down the sidewalk, hands deep in their coat pockets, breath frosting in the air. Both had black jackets, boots and jeans. At a distance, the only thing keeping them from looking identical was a yellow and black scarf that the one on the left side of the sidewalk wore tightly wrapped around their neck.

That, and hair color. The one with the yellow scarf had short, turquoise hair, spiking up in all directions as if it hadn't been brushed that morning(which was quite likely, given the time). The other had dirty blond hair that was about the same length as the blue-haired one, but combed down.

As they walked further down the street, it became apparent that they were walking towards an apartment building whose entrance was blocked off by yellow tape stating, quite specifically, Do Not Enter.

And, of course, they weren't going to listen.

The one on the right side of the street spoke up as they neared the entrance. "I should probably tell you why we're breaking into a crime scene, shouldn't I?"

"That'd be nice, yes," replied the other, her voice coming out in a tone that suggested that she thought she should still be asleep.

The pair stopped at the entrance to the apartment. "Yesterday, the police got a call about this house being burgled. When they got here, however, they found that the burglars had fled the scene. After further investigation, they discovered that the owners of the house were currently on vacation, and had somehow, very stupidly, left their door unlocked."

"Idiots," muttered the girl as she pulled her scarf up so that it covered her mouth and nose.

"Idiots indeed, Walatson." The man walked up the steps and reached past the police tape to try the handle. Amazingly, the door had not been locked again. "Idiots indeed."

He opened the door and ducked under the police tape, kicking the dirt on his boots onto the welcome mat as he stepped inside. Walatson followed behind him, wishing that she had thought to bring a tea thermos with her.

Her companion had immediately started picking things up and examining them with the magnifying glass he always kept in his pocket. The place was very neat and tidy, with the floor looking like it had recently been swept and all of the surfaces wiped down. The furniture was in very precise locations, everything looking almost _too_ neat. Flowers had been placed in the middle of the kitchen table, and several dishes were on the drying rack in a picturesque fashion.

Walatson cleared her throat, causing her friend to look up from the glass model of the globe he was examining. "Spudlock, were you ever going to finish explaining why we're breaking and entering?"

His hazel eyes looked up to meet her blue-grey ones from across the room. "Technically we're only entering, as the door was unlocked."

" _Tech_ nically you're evading my question." She wandered into the kitchen and placed the kettle on the electric stove, hoping that she didn't accidentally break anything. She pulled a cup out of one of the cabinets and began searching for where the tea was located.

Spudlock set down the glass globe and walked over to the fireplace, picking up photographs seemingly at random. "The burglars took several valuable things with them before they fled the scene."

Walatson's eyes lost some of their sleepy stupor as she turned to face her companion. "Am I gonna finally get to go on an adventure?" she asked excitedly.

"Quite possibly, my friend."

She leaned on the granite countertop. "D'you think I'll get to fight someone? What valuables did they take anyway? Are we gonna get a reward?" She looked excited to have finally landed a job that didn't involve tracking down someone's lost cat or phone.

"Many jewels were taken, as well as a quite expensive trophy and a very valuable. . ." He trailed off mid-sentence and looked around the room, as if trying to piece something together.

"A very valuable. . . ." His companion urged, making a circling motion with her hands to try and get the cogs of his brain moving again on the sentence he hadn't finished. Instead of answering, he moved to look at a painting of an old city with brick buildings. It was a couple feet tall, and took up most of the wall it was hanging on. Grasping the painting firmly by the frame, he lifted it off the wall and placed it so that it was now leaning against the wall instead of hanging.

Behind the space that the painting had been hanging in not a moment before was a safe, carefully locked with a keypad. Spudlock immediately typed in a four digit code, causing the safe to open with a beep.

"I'm not even going to ask how you knew that code," said Walatson, exiting the kitchen to stand by Spudlock so that she could look over his shoulder and into the safe. Inside the metal box in the wall was an empty burlap sack.

Spudlock grabbed the sack and sniffed the inside of it before nodding, satisfied, and handing the sack to his companion. She grabbed the sack and looked it over offhandedly.

"You still never told me what else the burglars took besides the jewels and the trophy."

Spudlock turned around abruptly with a dramatic swirl of his jacket. "Look at the label on the sack, Walatson."

His companion turned the sack over in her hands and let out a groan. "You've _got_ to be kidding me."

"I'm afraid that I am incapable of 'kidding', Walatson." He walked to the door and opened it, but before exiting the house, he turned to look at Walatson, a dramatic flair in his every move. "Now come along Walatson, the game is afoot!" He turned on his heel and left the building, leaving Walatson to stare after him in disbelief.

"A potato. . . . " she muttered as she put the burlap sack back in the safe and ran after Spudlock. "A freaking potato!"

One Week Later

Walatson walked into the kitchen and immediately placed a kettle on the stove, much more at ease with the gas stove than she had been with the electric one at the house they hadn't 'technically' broken into last week. She walked over to the kitchen table and opened up her laptop, immediately going to her email and discarding a few emails from various websites that held no real importance.

"So, have you found it yet?" she asked Spudlock, who was currently sitting on the couch, fiddling with a pencil.

Before Spudlock could answer her, the kettle in the kitchen began to whistle, and Walatson jumped out of her chair and rushed to turn off the burner. She came back a few minutes later with a steaming mug of tea in her hand.

"Well?"

He looked up from his pencil twirling. "Well what?"

"Have you got any leads on the. . . the potato case?"

"That is a truly awful name for this case," he said with a chuckle.

"Well, what would _you_ call it?" she said indignantly, taking a tentative sip of her tea.

He stared at the ceiling and thought a bit. "The Great Potato Chase!" he said with a dramatic sweep of his arms.

Walatson rolled her eyes. "That's even worse!"

"Fine, don't use my awesome title," he said with a huff, staring at the ceiling once more.

" _Have_ you gotten any further though?"

"It's in a storage facility on the corner of Worthington and Spandles."

Walatson blinked. "Wait, what?"

"Worthington and Spandles. The storage facility is called U-Store. Terrible name. Look it up."

Walatson started typing away on her laptop as Spudlock got up from the couch and deposited the pencil into a pencil cup on a desk in the corner.

"Huh, it actually exists," said Walatson.

"Of course it exists. Did you think I'd just made it up?"

Walatson peered at him suspiciously over the rim of her tea mug. "How long have you known about this?"

"Since we broke into that house last week."

"WHAT?!"

Spudlock nodded and pulled out a stool to sit on.

"So why haven't we gone down there yet?" she asked, setting down her tea mug and getting up from her chair, as if ready to leave that instant.

"I already got it."

She stared at him incredulously for a few moments, then sat back in her chair with a thump. "You. . . you are no fun."

"Last week you seemed too tired and grumpy to go and retrieve it, and this _past_ week you've been so busy with writery stuff things I'm surprised you haven't fallen down dead from the workload."

She blinked at him. "Writery things."

"Yup." He crossed over to the sliding glass door and stared out at their tiny backyard, hands clasped behind him.

Walatson huffed and folded her arms. "And we're just waiting for the owner to come back from his trip and get it?"

"Precisely, Walatson. I have arranged for him to pick it up in two weeks time. Until then, I have arranged to keep it safe for him."

"Uh-huh. Don't tell me. You stored it in your own storage room at U-Store," she said sarcastically.

"No. Places with terrible names can never be trusted," he said, not catching the sarcasm. "The potato is in a safe in our basement."

Walatson started to laugh at this absurd statement, but it quickly faded when she realized he wasn't kidding.

She stood up from her chair and joined him at the window, crossing her arms in concern.

"Spudlock. . . we don't have a basement."

"Of course we do, Walatson. I had it installed when you were spending a month in California. Come, I'll show you." He opened the sliding glass door and walked over to the far left corner of the backyard. Hiding behind an extremely tall clump of weeds was a patch of fake grass, which Spudlock lifted up to reveal a trapdoor. He pushed the fake grass off to the side and opened the trapdoor.

"Ladies first?"

Walatson gave him a poisonous look and walked down the cement stairs. At the bottom was a room perhaps only five feet square. The walls, floor, and ceiling were cement, and on the far side of the room was the metal door of a safe.

Spudlock walked past her and strode to the safe, quickly spinning a complicated passcode into the safe's lock as he spoke.

"Actually, it's more of a bomb shelter than a basement, but it serves the same pur-" He stopped speaking as the safe swung open.

Walatson tried to see past him, as it was very unusual for Spudlock to stop speaking mid-sentence, but he was blocking the view of the safe very well.

"What? What is it?"

"It's gone," he said, stepping back to reveal an empty safe with an astonished look on his face. "That should have been impossible. . ."

The astonishment quickly turned to puzzlement as he rushed up the stairs, intent on finding out who could have broken into his safe. Walatson closed the safe door for him and followed him up the stairs, making sure to cover up the trapdoor properly before following Spudlock into the house. By the time she joined him inside, he had brought out a whiteboard and was in the process of finding a pen that worked.

Walatson rolled her eyes and closed the sliding glass door behind her, then walked over to the dining room table to discover, to her great disappointment, that her tea was merely lukewarm at this point.

Spudlock started drawing up a diagram of the past week, making notes that were barely legible scribbles at the pace he was going in his urgency. "Impossible. . ." he muttered, stepping back to look over his notes.

"Y'know, maybe you just dreamed that you had the potato," Walatson suggested, sitting down in front of her laptop and draining the rest of her tea in a single gulp.

"No, I've been checking up on it periodically." He dragged the whiteboard over so that it was facing Walatson. Using his marker as a pointer, he tapped the whiteboard, indicating a diagram of the week.

"These red blotches," he said, tapping the board on Thursday, Sunday, and Tuesday, "are when I last checked up on the potato."

Walatson nodded, absentmindedly reaching for her tea before realizing there wasn't any left.

"The last time I checked up on it was at 1:30 Tuesday morning, meaning that the thief had approximately nineteen hours to break into my vault, which I had previously thought impossible, given the complexity of the code I used."

Walatson became distracted from his ranting by a beep that came from her laptop. She turned toward it and clicked on the only tab that was still up, and after a couple seconds of reading, she frowned.

Spudlock hadn't noticed this distraction. "Clearly we're dealing with someone smart, maybe someone trained in code-breaking. . ." He looked up from his rant and noticed that Walatson was no longer paying attention.

"What is it, Walatson? Something important I presume?"

She looked up from her computer screen, her frown one of both confusion and concern.

"I just got an email from the Inspector. He's asking us to come down to the station right away."


	2. Detective Inspector

"Who?"

"The Detective Inspector. . . uh, hold on." Walatson began typing up a google search and was soon rewarded with answers.

"Detective Inspector Hollow. He's been the head of the police department for five years now."

"Never heard of him."

"Course you haven't, ya recluse." Walatson glued herself to the computer screen as she did more research. Spudlock wandered around the room and waited to hear of her findings, not bothering to put the whiteboard away.

A few minutes later, Walatson had skimmed through the Inspector's Wikipedia page. "He solved a big murder case a few years back involving a clock maker who was murdering people with his hand-made clocks. Something about poison. Does that ring any bells?"

"No."

Walatson sighed. "Of course it doesn't."

"Who buys hand-made clocks anymore anyways?" asked Spudlock, looking around and seeing only digital timekeepers.

Walatson was about to answer when there came a knock on their door. She leaned around the whiteboard to stare at the door in confusion. No one ever knocked at their residence, not even the mailman after Spudlock had scared him away.

Walatson and Spudlock looked at each other, perplexed, and a long enough time passed for the person at their door to knock again.

Walatson got up, dodged around the whiteboard, and walked to the door. When she opened it, she found the man whose picture had been on the Wikipedia page she had just been looking at.

"Hello," she said politely.

"Hello," he returned. He brought a police badge out of his coat pocket and brought it up so that Walatson was staring straight at it. "Detective Inspector Hollow. May I come in?"

Walatson nodded and stood aside to let him pass.

"That was quick," she remarked as she closed the door. "Didn't you just send me an email this morning?"

"I sent that email five days ago."

"Oh. Well. . . um. . ."

"She's been busy with writery stuff," said Spudlock, regarding the Inspector suspiciously.

Hollow raised an eyebrow at 'writery stuff', but he didn't comment.

Walatson, who had started blushing slightly, merely muttered "Deadlines," as she walked back to her computer.

"I understand you've been looking into this case about the. . .um, the stolen potato."

"Yes, the Great Potato Chase," said Spudlock. "We've been doing some research."

"'Research' as in trespassing in a crime scene? I could give you a fine just for that, but instead, I want you both to come down to the station with me."

"What for?" asked Spudlock.

"Are we in trouble?" asked Walatson, closing her computer and turning in her seat to face the Inspector.

"You're not in any trouble, no." He turned to Spudlock. "I've heard of your expertise in solving mysteries and unraveling crime scenes. I believe you could help us with this case."

"Why should I?"

"I'm willing to offer a generous sum of money for your assistance."

"We'll take it!" said Walatson, cutting off anything that Spudlock might have been about to say. She walked to the corner of the room and grabbed her coat off of a coat hanger, prepared to leave that instant.

"But I don't-" Spudlock tried to protest, but Hollow cut him off before he could get much further in his sentence.

"We found the potato."

Walatson grabbed Spudlock's coat as well and threw it in his general direction before turning to grab her keys. Spudlock caught it without even looking, still staring at the detective.

"Lead the way."

. . . . . . . . .

Fifteen minutes later, they were exiting Hollow's police car (Spudlock had to be let out of the backseat) and walking into the station. They were greeted by a nice secretary before they went down a hallway to the left and down a flight of stairs.

"Where's the potato?" asked Spudlock as they were walking.

"It's in a safe downstairs. But that's not where we're going."

"No? And where are we going to?"

Hollow didn't answer, but instead lead us inside a room with a gurney and a body bag in the middle. The room had several counter tops, and the wall space was mostly taken up by what looked like square metal lockers.

They walked over to the body bag.

"This woman was found holding the potato. We believe she may have died in order to keep it with her, but her death is very unusual. We think the manner in which she died may be important to the case."

And with that, Hollow proceeded to unzip the body bag.


	3. The Chase Begins

The body was horribly mangled and misshapen. The face was contorted in a way that made it barely recognizable as human. Thin strands of blond hair poked out from the scalp in patches, as if someone had started tearing it out. Bones poked out of the skin in odd places, and bruises covered the body like paint.

Walatson's mouth had gone into a straight line, as if suppressing the urge to throw up, although Spudlock knew she could handle seeing gore like this.

"All means of identifying her are gone. We just know that she was found with the potato," said Hollow.

"Where?" asked Spudlock.

"Outside the U-Store on the corner of Worthington and Spandles. The store manager came to check up on his building and found her there, right outside."

"How long has she been here?"

"Since yesterday morning. I was trying to contact you a week ago because of the break in and theft. As well as something else. Follow me."

Hollow walked out of the room and waited for Walatson and Spudlock to join him in the hallway before he closed the door. Then he went further into the building and down another flight of stairs, where he pulled out a key to unlock a metal door. He ushered Walatson and Spudlock inside before closing the door and joining them in the room.

The room was plain, with white walls and a cement floor. A single strip of overhead lights ran down the center of the ceiling. Cameras were in each corner of the room and a single table was in the center, upon which the potato had been placed.

"This is an unusual room for a police station to have," remarked Spudlock, spinning slowly in a circle as he took everything in.

"We had the room installed a few years ago. Someone who no longer works here came up with the idea."

"I see. . ." Spudlock crossed over to the table and took a look at the potato. After a moment he sighed and looked at the Detective with disappointment. "This isn't it."

"What?"

"This isn't the potato. Whoever left this with the body upstairs left it as a warning."

"A warning? For a potato?!"

Spudlock turned to face the inspector with a dramatic twirl. "That potato is very valuable, Inspector, so the sooner I find it the better. Do try not to waste any more of my time with false claims." Spudlock swept towards the door , opened it, and climbed the stairs at a moderately fast pace. Walatson, after a moment of hesitation, followed after him.

Soon they were out of the police station and walking back towards their apartment in silence. Walatson could tell that Spudlock was thinking things through, so she let the silence last, but eventually she spoke up.

"Any thoughts?"

"First of all, the Inspector lied to me. That girl was _not_ found in front of the U-Store, she had been left on a beach somewhere, probably a very popular one for her to still be considered as a warning. Secondly, they know who she is. Or at least, they will once a certain report comes back to them. Her teeth were still intact and they can easily find her dental records. Thirdly, I know where the potato is. If we retrieve it today, we can bring it back to the owner tomorrow and collect our reward, as his plane lands in. . ." He paused to check the time on his watch. "Three hours."

"And you got all that from looking at some poor girl's' body?"

"She wasn't poor, she was actually quite wealthy." Seeing Walatson's look of confusion, Spudlock restated his claim. "There was a plastic baggie on one of the counters containing her possessions. Inside was a gold watch, diamond earrings, and a diamond ring, among other things."

"Okay, so she was rich. What does that tell us?"

Spudlock turned to Walatson so that she had to stop abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk.

"It tells us exactly where the potato is, Walatson. Exactly where it is."


	4. The Girl

"Anything?"

"No, nothing yet sir."

"Let me know."

"Yes, sir."

The man walked out of the room and down the hallway, feeling professional in his suit and tie. It wasn't often he got to view the facility that he owned. He left the running of the place to his lead scientist. It was strange that the man only visited rarely, but he had other work to do.

He rapped on a door and entered without waiting for permission. "How is everything in here?"

"Good, sir. We'll be getting results in about thirty minutes."

"Let me know when you do."

"Yes, sir."

The man started making his way up the many staircases toward his office. He took his time and ignored the elevators, preferring instead to gaze out the windows as he walked. Eventually, he made his way to the door of his office and entered in the keycode absentmindedly. The door handle read his thumbprint and beeped before letting him inside.

His office was spacious, being located on the top floor of his building. It contained a couple of house plants, a desk, a couple chairs, and a laptop. He kept the surfaces neat and tidy, and the massive window behind the desk was always uncovered to let in the natural light.

He moved behind his desk and sat down in his comfy office chair, swiveling for a moment before leaning forward and opening up his laptop.

A name had intrigued him in the past few days. Normally he was quite oblivious to the workings of the outside world, but this time he was curious enough to do his own research on this particular name.

He entered in the password on his laptop, opened up a web browser, and started typing.

 _J. Walatson_

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"So, this is the beach you think she died at?"

"I _know_ she died here, Walatson. There _is_ a difference." Spudlock was pacing up and down the beach, combing the rocky sand for clues. They were relatively close to the pier, and the beach was fairly empty, with only a lone fisherman and a woman walking her dog in the near vicinity.

"Gosh, grumpy much?" asked Walatson, watching him pace from a safe distance.

"I didn't get any sleep last night."

"What were you doing?"

Spudlock knelt to get a closer look at the sand, then aimed his gaze further up the beach. "I was researching missing people's reports."

"And?"

"The girl isn't mentioned anywhere." Spudlock stood up and started walking towards the base of the pier without waiting to see if Walatson would follow him. "We don't know her name, but she's most likely from a wealthy family, which means that there would be a substantial reward for any information about where she went. However, the only recent missing people have been men."

He stopped at the pier and crouched to crawl under. The pier rested on top of a cement block, and underneath the pier, in the cement block, was a hole that looked like it led to a sewer of some kind. Spudlock and Walatson crouched by the entrance to the hole.

"Are you ready for an adventure, Walatson?" asked Spudlock, pulling a flashlight from out of his pocket.

"Mate, I've been ready for an adventure since you moved into my apartment." She snatched the flashlight from Spudlock and stepped into the dark.


End file.
